


icarus eye

by embryonic



Category: Black Swan (2010)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-10
Updated: 2013-09-10
Packaged: 2017-12-26 05:39:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/962245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embryonic/pseuds/embryonic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“The show must go on,” They tell her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	icarus eye

**Author's Note:**

> Head in the dirt and I'm home. (And you were the missing elements, for a few glow in the dark moments.)  
>  \- Mariee Sioux

She thinks about Nina, while dancing the White Swan.   
  
(She had had trouble letting go, until she found the solution to freedom. But Lily’s problem is holding on. And what must  _her_  solution be, she wonders, as she spins and spins and fucks up her final pirouette because she is thinking too much.)  
  
“Be pure, Lily.” Says Thomas. “Be sweet and innocent, and -” He pauses, softening. Perhaps Nina’s death has gotten to him more than he lets on. “Be perfect.” He commands.  
  
Thomas does not touch her, all throughout rehearsal, and Lily guesses that neither of them can concentrate on anything but Her. The flawless arch of her back, her perfect plie. Frigid bitch, Lily had always thought.  
  
She would have liked to take her out more often. To drink, and dance, and fuck. To say, This is what your life could be like. To show her freedom.   
  
But, Nina would never had said yes, and Lily was all ready well on her way to giving up.   
  
-  
  
“The show must go on,” They tell her. (That is, after all, what Nina would say.) Lily always thought she knew her, somehow. I see how your mind works, she’d think, when Nina would have nothing at all to say. I used to be like you.   
  
And she did. She can just picture it: rigorous training since she could walk, overbearing parents living vicariously through their daughter, god damn eating disorder. Poor little Nina, with no guts at all. And this is what it came to.   
  
Lily feels a rush of fucking gratefulness wash over her.   
  
“I need a break.” She says while Thomas, with his head in his hands, practically ignores her.   
  
-  
  
Lily sits in Nina’s dressing room, silently.   
  
She pulls out a cigarette, and contemplates not smoking it until she remembers one of the few conversations they had. Lighting up, she doubts Nina would mind.   
  
She notices the broken mirror, the place where the broken shards of glass must have been. (I’ll let you finish, she’d told Nina, awkwardly. What would she have done if she had known?)   
  
-  
  
She’d had the perfect vantage point when Nina fell.   
  
Lily saw the Black Swan, as Nina stared out into the audience, an indulgent smirk on her face. Lily was filled with pride.   
  
And then there was the White Swan, of course, who Nina just embodied. She was perfect, and Lily was for a second, perhaps, jealous.   
  
But then, the music swelled and this was what they had all been waiting for and for one spectacular moment, there was no Swan Queen, no good and no evil. There was just Nina.  
  
Lily takes a drag, then another, then gets on her hands and knees and cries for someone she hardly knew. It could have been me, she thinks, and wonders why they did not try harder to save the sweet girl - the Swan Queen - from  all of that evil inside herself.   
  
But, the show must go on, and when Lily dances the Black Swan, she does not think of Nina, but of her pale face, and fragile limbs, and perfect death.   
  
-


End file.
